LINGUIST List 16.621

Wed Mar 02 2005

Jobs: Computational Linguistics: Post Doc, Saarland U

Editor for this issue: Vanessa Manion <vanessalinguistlist.org>

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The Department for Computational Linguistics and Phonetics, Saarland University, Germany, is seeking to fill a full-time Post Doc position in the PTOLEMAIOS research project on grammar induction from parallel corpora.

Applicants should hold a doctoral degree in computer science, computational linguistics or a similar field. Previous work experience in research projects in computational linguistics is expected, comprising both practical program development and the development of theoretical models/formalisms. An ideal candidate will have advanced expertise in 1-2 of the following areas, and a good basic knowledge in several of the other areas: - Current machine learning techniques for natural language grammars/parsers (in particular log-linear/Maximum Entropy models and other discriminative learning methods) - Weakly supervised learning (in particular Bootstrapping) - Statistical Machine Translation based on the noisy channel model - Dynamic programming techniques for parsing/generation with linguistically motivated grammar formalisms - Computational syntax, grammar formalisms, and linguistic learning theories (in particular Optimality Theoretic Syntax)

The PTOLEMAIOS project is a new research group led by Jonas Kuhn in the context of the Emmy Noether program by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG; German Science Foundation). The project is expected to run until March 2009. For information on the project see: http://www.coli.uni-sb.de/~jonask/PTOLEMAIOS/

The position is at the rank of 'Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter'. The salary is determined by the payscale for German public employees (Vergütungsgruppe BAT IIa) and amounts to approximately EUR 42,000.- per year. The exact salary amount varies depending on age and marital status.

The earliest possible starting date for the position is 1 April 2005, and the initial contract will run until March 2007; after this, a two-year extension of the contract is possible.

Applications should include a CV, an outline of research experience/interests, 1-2 sample publications, and names, email addresses and telephone numbers of two references. Electronic applications (if possible in PDF format) are preferred and should be directed to the email address below. Applications received by 21 March 2005 will receive full consideration.

The Saarland University seeks to increase the proportion of women in this subject area, and therefore particularly encourages applications from women. In the selection procedure, disabled persons with equivalent qualifications will be favoured.